Growing up, Kaylie Flynn was shuffled from foster home to foster home before being welcomed into Winton and May Wise’s family. It was May who taught Kaylie the comfort of home, and the healing power of baking the perfect brownie. Years later, May leaves Kaylie the money she needs to open her own café in the charming Victorian house they once shared. Now back in Hope Springs, Kaylie’s determined to finally make all her dreams a reality—and unearth answers to lingering questions about her past.

Soon, however, Kaylie’s carefully laid plans take an unexpected turn. The house needs far more work than she realized, and Tennessee Keller, the carpenter Kaylie hires, is proving to be a very handsome and very unneeded distraction from her quest to uncover the truth about her parents. When a crisis threatens to destroy everything she’s worked so hard to build, Kaylie must decide where her heart lies: with the ghosts of her past or the love and promise of her future.

Veteran romance author Kent (Undeniable) inaugurates a small-town series set in Hope Springs, Tex., the kind of place where people remember Kaylie Flynn by name when she comes back after 10 years away. She left as a newly emancipated foster child; now she's a college-educated woman with one successful business built and another taking shape in her mind. The gorgeous but deteriorating Victorian house that was her refuge in childhood will be renovated and opened to the town as a lunch café – if the surprises in those old walls and Kaylie's own secrets don't bring her plans crashing down. Shoring up the dream is building contractor Tennessee Keller, a man with a troubled family history of his own and a determination not to mix business and pleasure. Girl talk, brownie recipes and a goofy dog named Magoo complete this pleasant confection with the right balance of hope and memory, tears and sizzle.